The present disclosure relates to a packaging box for protecting a packaged article during its conveyance, storage and others.
A type A packaging box formed of a packaging material such as a cardboard is often used in carrying or storing an image forming apparatus, such as a printer, a copying machine, a facsimile, a multifunctional peripheral or the like, or components composing the image forming apparatus. As shown in FIG. 5A and FIG. 5B, the type A packaging box is a box formed such that an opening of a box-like body part 100 is opened/closed by a plurality of folding flaps 101. This type of box is widely used because it is relatively inexpensive.
The packaging material is selected for such packaging box in accordance to a weight of the packaged article, and a packaging material of a sufficient high strength is used in packaging or loading a heavy article such as the image forming apparatus. In a case where the high strength packaging material is used, when the flaps are opened to unpack the box, the flaps 101 may be kept substantially upright as shown in FIG. 5A or the flaps 101 may fold downward inside by itself, disabling to completely open the opening. If a work for taking in/out the packaged article in the state in which the flaps 101 are kept substantially upright is carried out, since a vertical distance to the packaged article stored in the body part 100 becomes longer by a length of the flap, it becomes hard to reach the packaged article, making it difficult to carry out the taking in/out the packaged article. Still further, even if the flaps 101 is creased to be folded outside, the flaps 101 often turn substantially only into a horizontal posture as shown in FIG. 5B because of its strong spring-back property. In this case, a horizontal distance to the packaged article becomes longer by the length of the flap 101. This problem is remarkable in case of a packaging box packaging a large packaged article such as the image forming apparatus.
To that end, there is a method of taking out the packaged article while keeping the flaps in an opened state by folding the flaps on an outside of the body part, opening an upper end portion of a wrapping material wrapping the packaged article and then covering the outside of the flaps with the wrapping material.
However, this article taking-out method is supposed to use the wrapping material and is unable to deal with a case when no wrapping material is used for the packaged article. Still further, it is necessary to adjust a shape and size of the wrapping material with those of the body part and a large-scale work of opening and covering the wrapping material over the folded flap is required.